an eye for horror, or, why nothing's rotten in denmark
against the current of my passions, i'll start this thought on a note of understanding...four or five years ago, quite dissatisfied with the state of modern horror films, i began contemplating the ultimate horror film while serving barbeque to conservative virginians. it occurred to me at the time that horror cinema had grown stale as the world grew more modern and technological. films like the exorcist were no longer scary because the dark, lonely spaces traditionally appropriated for ghosts and demons had been swallowed by an increased popularization of science as well as by a proliferation of instruments that took much attention away from superstitious concerns. films like the ring and fear dot com had failed at moving horror into the technological age. so, i thought, what would it take to really frighten and upset people?
it finally occurred to me: using disturbing imagery, i'd create a story where a the citizens of a somewhat multicultural area are assailed by visions where their worldviews are completely effaced and/or inverted. most of these ideas for scenes came to me as perversions of religious imagery and stories. not only would this be horrifying to the person receiving the vision, it would create a kind of twilight zone-ish effect, where the hallucinations would induce xenophobia, hatred and ultimaely chaos, cruelty and violence within a community that could have otherwise been peaceful.
so, thinking back on this--and how effective i still thik it would be as a film--i can say that i think i have a sense for the the "why" of the fever pitch created by the now infamous danish cartoons. but in light of those cartoons, i start to get the idea that making that film would be like signing my own death warrant. and it's important that i can say that without a hint of alarmism as an american living in the 21st century. no, no--really important...let me pick up with the current...
for the entire history of film, as far back as bunuel and dali's sacreligious imagery in 'l'age d'or', it has been possible for citizens and artisans of the west to portray christianity in whatever light they saw fit, no matter how "blasphemous." not to confuse possiblility with acceptability--certainly films and paintings and books have been protested, burned and banned because they managed to offend somebody's personal superstition. but by the late 20th century, it seemed that most christians had learned to cope with the fact that freedom of religion and freedom of speech went hand in hand. only the fundamentalist splinters--the freaks like pat robertson--would say that these films and books should not be allowed to exist or that their creators deserved punishments from heaven. not so in the muslim world...
i can't help but wonder what sense of history--or of their own religion--many of these protestors has (especially the ones who carried signs calling for the "butchering" of those who offend islam presumably by drawing a portrait of a holy figure). how many of them could answer the following question: "why is it prohibited to create visual representations of the prophet?" the answer i suspect (of course, i may be wrong) would have something to do with an all encopassing holiness or sacredness...but the injuction followed from the very insightful notion on the part of muslim clerics that the image of muhammed might come to be worshipped, which would be a gross diversion from those things that muslims are supposed to focus the energy of worship upon. which makes these protests more than a slight bit of hypocrisy. it isn't that the image of muhammed is sacred--it is that, supposedly, his teachings are far more sacred than an image. the teachings, we are told, are of peace and brotherhood. it is safe to say, without being accused of racism or of being anti-islamic, that the core of the message and the fundamental reason for the original prohibition has been completely lost amongst the zealous faithful.
to many, moustapha akkad's 'the messenger' was blasphemous because it portrayed prophet muhammed on film. to many telling the story of one of the world's great religions in the cinema was a sin. but even worse was salman rushdie's invocation of the much debated qu'ranic verses. for this? death warrants. for a verse whose existence wasn't even contested by a good many faithful muslim clerics. and today, danish buildings in beirut are on fire because of a cartoon. the cartoon depicted muhammed with a bomb on his head rather than a turban. offended by the suggestion that muhammed might have been a violent fellow (or, apparently, a fellow at all who had features the speculation about which might be drawn on some paper) a great many angry muslims have set out to teach us a lesson by burning down buildings. now, if the brilliance of this tactic escapes you, just think back to the faithful "right-to-life" christians who took to bombing abortion clinics not too many years ago...at a certain point, one might simply remind any aspiring cartoonists that religion does an excellent job of caricaturing itself without any help from the outside. it is history, not religious, ethnic or racial prejudice that tells a rather consistent story regarding religions that accomplish a high level of survival over time: they never, ever do so without the help of violence and corecion. islam (and with it, muhammed) is no exception. nor are the religions founded by christ and moses.
aside from the well-documented conquering exploits of muhammed in the 7th century CE, the prevalence of islam in the region we call the middle east has much to do with the fact that, following the roman empire, the next great empire was that of the ottomans. the ottomans were by no means anti-imperial or peaceful. they were expansionist and, at times, quite brutal. much of their success can be attributed to what was called the devsirme system. in this system, the government and the elite of the military are comprised exlusively of slaves. these slaves (all male) were usually recruited before they were ten years old. but islam rejects the enslaving of other muslims--so the slaves taken were almost exclusively christian (not from other lands--they were taken from within the empire itself whose population was both multi-ethnic and multi-religious) . these young boys would then be converted to islam and brought up to serve the sultans either in the government or in the military. and, as with so many "great religions," the heart and soul of islamic power and expansion was the result of the marriage of church and state, when the sultan suleyman "the magnificent" declared himself a descendant of the prophet and therefore the caliph. then, just like the christian conquereors of europe and the armies of king david in mesopotamia, the presence of god was made known--not by word of mouth or because the people read whatever book god had sent, but because many a bloody sword demanded it of an illiterate majority that had not yet developed the tools to fight against imperialism or the mental capacities to think critically.
these things, they only tell you in history class--never in madresses. just like they never told us about the spanish killers-for-jesus in sunday school (conquistadors or inquisitors, take your pick). i suspect its because they know that the conscience of a seven year-old is sharp enough to start asking serious questions about the greatness of a religion that killed enough non-believers in a town square to have the citizens knee-deep in blood. and when we do read the accounts of holy wars--which none of the big three religions shy away from in their texts--we are offered them as grandiose tales of the establishment of god's kingdom on earth. by now it should be a truism that the establishment of kingdoms requires a good deal of death, no matter the name or geographic preference of the king. and if we've decided in the past 150 years that this kind of conquest is no longer a desirable trait for the humans species to retain, how can we not condemn god's mercenaries and question the motives (and the supposed goodness) of god himself?
days go by and i feel like i am developing a better natured sense of humor about having to share the voting booth and the world economy with people that believe in fairies, goblins, witches, demons, jinns, luck, fortune telling and the like (hey--if you can't laugh at a tragedy, what can you do, right?) but days like today and yesterday, my sense of humor gets overshadowed by an even more humorless bunch. we in the west (some muslims included, believe it or not) have got to the point where the only thing we can think to do sometimes is have a laugh. we've been laughing at christians for decades--that means laughing at ourselves, at our mothers, fathers and grandparents. and now that all eyes are on the middle east, we've just got to take the piss every once in a while. and if we wouldn't withold for ourselves and our own families, what makes any muslim or group of muslims think that they're going to get any fancy priveledges? at least when george carlin made cracks about jesus in the 1960's, nobody could rally a significant enough group of christians together to advocate beheading him. in london, however, the same cannot be said for the danish cartoonists. beheading. i mean, guys, come on. do you not get the picture, as they say? do you not feel the slightest tinge of guilt every time the word 'salam' leaves your lips?
but again i might be able to keep my mouth shut if i felt like people here in this country in this century were cozy with that freedom of speech bit, but i don't think they are. there's something that religious moderates and tolerant folks out there are covering up when they defend the right of the religious not to be offended. progressive christians and muslims, along with the bush administration are all united in condemning the foul drawings. but...why? don't we all know by now what happens to a person when they never learn to laugh at themselves? they become bitter, oversensitive--they feel persecuted and defensive. they develop inferiority complexes and often, if left unchecked, they can exhibit some angry and even violent behavior. now take this principle and aggregate it. welcome to the front page. it seems now that making that film i was talking about would be a bit extraneous. and if pasolini couldn't survive 'salo,' i'm certainly not going to gamble. because that's where religious people stand with freedom of speech--in the way...sometimes with a big gun. or a bomb. how much can a slag really hurt if there isn't a lick of truth in it?
what breaks my heart is that i want very much to align myself in solidarity with the geopolitical plight of muslims. i refuse to believe that that plight is the re-establishment of a talibanesque medieval caliphate in every land on earth. i believe it is a life free from political and economic poverty and slavery. for many, such as the kurds and the palestinians, it is the right to a home and to self-determination. and, for the afghans and the sudanese, it is the ability to repair a nation crippled almost to death by decades of war. but to most of the people who share these goals, my rejection of religion (of any cloth) is tantamount to a rejection of THEM. just another white prejudiced muslim-hating american. but it is nothing new for people who are disenfranchised and opressed to identify with fanaticism and to take refuge in superstition. but since the end of the great ottoman empire in 1924, this has been the trajectory in the middle east.
the tools that we americans use to enjoy our superiority are descended directly from the golden age of islam. too many centuries of wrong-headed western thinking has thought best to keep these tools as our exclusive domain, thereby perpetuating our own prosperity. but they should be given back, with interest. and when i say with interest, i say that because frankly in the interim centuries, we have done some wonderful things, say, with algebra and philosophy (every translation of greek philosophy we read today comes from a latin text which was translated from middle-eastern texts). a few of the things we discovered were things like the benefit of a separation between church and state and the power of rational thinking and the necessity to remain critical and skeptical of any power or voice that claims to own or control you. that includes the voice of god. the circle is coming back around and the snake is biting its own tail. there is something worth caricaturing about that state of affairs--and something worth changing. and it doesn't start with silence.
it finally occurred to me: using disturbing imagery, i'd create a story where a the citizens of a somewhat multicultural area are assailed by visions where their worldviews are completely effaced and/or inverted. most of these ideas for scenes came to me as perversions of religious imagery and stories. not only would this be horrifying to the person receiving the vision, it would create a kind of twilight zone-ish effect, where the hallucinations would induce xenophobia, hatred and ultimaely chaos, cruelty and violence within a community that could have otherwise been peaceful.
so, thinking back on this--and how effective i still thik it would be as a film--i can say that i think i have a sense for the the "why" of the fever pitch created by the now infamous danish cartoons. but in light of those cartoons, i start to get the idea that making that film would be like signing my own death warrant. and it's important that i can say that without a hint of alarmism as an american living in the 21st century. no, no--really important...let me pick up with the current...
for the entire history of film, as far back as bunuel and dali's sacreligious imagery in 'l'age d'or', it has been possible for citizens and artisans of the west to portray christianity in whatever light they saw fit, no matter how "blasphemous." not to confuse possiblility with acceptability--certainly films and paintings and books have been protested, burned and banned because they managed to offend somebody's personal superstition. but by the late 20th century, it seemed that most christians had learned to cope with the fact that freedom of religion and freedom of speech went hand in hand. only the fundamentalist splinters--the freaks like pat robertson--would say that these films and books should not be allowed to exist or that their creators deserved punishments from heaven. not so in the muslim world...
i can't help but wonder what sense of history--or of their own religion--many of these protestors has (especially the ones who carried signs calling for the "butchering" of those who offend islam presumably by drawing a portrait of a holy figure). how many of them could answer the following question: "why is it prohibited to create visual representations of the prophet?" the answer i suspect (of course, i may be wrong) would have something to do with an all encopassing holiness or sacredness...but the injuction followed from the very insightful notion on the part of muslim clerics that the image of muhammed might come to be worshipped, which would be a gross diversion from those things that muslims are supposed to focus the energy of worship upon. which makes these protests more than a slight bit of hypocrisy. it isn't that the image of muhammed is sacred--it is that, supposedly, his teachings are far more sacred than an image. the teachings, we are told, are of peace and brotherhood. it is safe to say, without being accused of racism or of being anti-islamic, that the core of the message and the fundamental reason for the original prohibition has been completely lost amongst the zealous faithful.
to many, moustapha akkad's 'the messenger' was blasphemous because it portrayed prophet muhammed on film. to many telling the story of one of the world's great religions in the cinema was a sin. but even worse was salman rushdie's invocation of the much debated qu'ranic verses. for this? death warrants. for a verse whose existence wasn't even contested by a good many faithful muslim clerics. and today, danish buildings in beirut are on fire because of a cartoon. the cartoon depicted muhammed with a bomb on his head rather than a turban. offended by the suggestion that muhammed might have been a violent fellow (or, apparently, a fellow at all who had features the speculation about which might be drawn on some paper) a great many angry muslims have set out to teach us a lesson by burning down buildings. now, if the brilliance of this tactic escapes you, just think back to the faithful "right-to-life" christians who took to bombing abortion clinics not too many years ago...at a certain point, one might simply remind any aspiring cartoonists that religion does an excellent job of caricaturing itself without any help from the outside. it is history, not religious, ethnic or racial prejudice that tells a rather consistent story regarding religions that accomplish a high level of survival over time: they never, ever do so without the help of violence and corecion. islam (and with it, muhammed) is no exception. nor are the religions founded by christ and moses.
aside from the well-documented conquering exploits of muhammed in the 7th century CE, the prevalence of islam in the region we call the middle east has much to do with the fact that, following the roman empire, the next great empire was that of the ottomans. the ottomans were by no means anti-imperial or peaceful. they were expansionist and, at times, quite brutal. much of their success can be attributed to what was called the devsirme system. in this system, the government and the elite of the military are comprised exlusively of slaves. these slaves (all male) were usually recruited before they were ten years old. but islam rejects the enslaving of other muslims--so the slaves taken were almost exclusively christian (not from other lands--they were taken from within the empire itself whose population was both multi-ethnic and multi-religious) . these young boys would then be converted to islam and brought up to serve the sultans either in the government or in the military. and, as with so many "great religions," the heart and soul of islamic power and expansion was the result of the marriage of church and state, when the sultan suleyman "the magnificent" declared himself a descendant of the prophet and therefore the caliph. then, just like the christian conquereors of europe and the armies of king david in mesopotamia, the presence of god was made known--not by word of mouth or because the people read whatever book god had sent, but because many a bloody sword demanded it of an illiterate majority that had not yet developed the tools to fight against imperialism or the mental capacities to think critically.
these things, they only tell you in history class--never in madresses. just like they never told us about the spanish killers-for-jesus in sunday school (conquistadors or inquisitors, take your pick). i suspect its because they know that the conscience of a seven year-old is sharp enough to start asking serious questions about the greatness of a religion that killed enough non-believers in a town square to have the citizens knee-deep in blood. and when we do read the accounts of holy wars--which none of the big three religions shy away from in their texts--we are offered them as grandiose tales of the establishment of god's kingdom on earth. by now it should be a truism that the establishment of kingdoms requires a good deal of death, no matter the name or geographic preference of the king. and if we've decided in the past 150 years that this kind of conquest is no longer a desirable trait for the humans species to retain, how can we not condemn god's mercenaries and question the motives (and the supposed goodness) of god himself?
days go by and i feel like i am developing a better natured sense of humor about having to share the voting booth and the world economy with people that believe in fairies, goblins, witches, demons, jinns, luck, fortune telling and the like (hey--if you can't laugh at a tragedy, what can you do, right?) but days like today and yesterday, my sense of humor gets overshadowed by an even more humorless bunch. we in the west (some muslims included, believe it or not) have got to the point where the only thing we can think to do sometimes is have a laugh. we've been laughing at christians for decades--that means laughing at ourselves, at our mothers, fathers and grandparents. and now that all eyes are on the middle east, we've just got to take the piss every once in a while. and if we wouldn't withold for ourselves and our own families, what makes any muslim or group of muslims think that they're going to get any fancy priveledges? at least when george carlin made cracks about jesus in the 1960's, nobody could rally a significant enough group of christians together to advocate beheading him. in london, however, the same cannot be said for the danish cartoonists. beheading. i mean, guys, come on. do you not get the picture, as they say? do you not feel the slightest tinge of guilt every time the word 'salam' leaves your lips?
but again i might be able to keep my mouth shut if i felt like people here in this country in this century were cozy with that freedom of speech bit, but i don't think they are. there's something that religious moderates and tolerant folks out there are covering up when they defend the right of the religious not to be offended. progressive christians and muslims, along with the bush administration are all united in condemning the foul drawings. but...why? don't we all know by now what happens to a person when they never learn to laugh at themselves? they become bitter, oversensitive--they feel persecuted and defensive. they develop inferiority complexes and often, if left unchecked, they can exhibit some angry and even violent behavior. now take this principle and aggregate it. welcome to the front page. it seems now that making that film i was talking about would be a bit extraneous. and if pasolini couldn't survive 'salo,' i'm certainly not going to gamble. because that's where religious people stand with freedom of speech--in the way...sometimes with a big gun. or a bomb. how much can a slag really hurt if there isn't a lick of truth in it?
what breaks my heart is that i want very much to align myself in solidarity with the geopolitical plight of muslims. i refuse to believe that that plight is the re-establishment of a talibanesque medieval caliphate in every land on earth. i believe it is a life free from political and economic poverty and slavery. for many, such as the kurds and the palestinians, it is the right to a home and to self-determination. and, for the afghans and the sudanese, it is the ability to repair a nation crippled almost to death by decades of war. but to most of the people who share these goals, my rejection of religion (of any cloth) is tantamount to a rejection of THEM. just another white prejudiced muslim-hating american. but it is nothing new for people who are disenfranchised and opressed to identify with fanaticism and to take refuge in superstition. but since the end of the great ottoman empire in 1924, this has been the trajectory in the middle east.
the tools that we americans use to enjoy our superiority are descended directly from the golden age of islam. too many centuries of wrong-headed western thinking has thought best to keep these tools as our exclusive domain, thereby perpetuating our own prosperity. but they should be given back, with interest. and when i say with interest, i say that because frankly in the interim centuries, we have done some wonderful things, say, with algebra and philosophy (every translation of greek philosophy we read today comes from a latin text which was translated from middle-eastern texts). a few of the things we discovered were things like the benefit of a separation between church and state and the power of rational thinking and the necessity to remain critical and skeptical of any power or voice that claims to own or control you. that includes the voice of god. the circle is coming back around and the snake is biting its own tail. there is something worth caricaturing about that state of affairs--and something worth changing. and it doesn't start with silence.